Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In the mid-1990s, I had a chance to speak to some editors gathered in a Bible Belt city — let’s leave it at that — about how to improve religion coverage at their newspapers.
“Church ends taboo on mercy killings,” crowed the headline on Sunday’s Observer, and the story that followed, by social affairs editor Jamie Doward, carried on in the same excited manner:
Three major dailies — the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle — have published lengthy follow-up stories on the Children of God (now The Family International) since last week’s murder-suicide by Richard P. Rodriguez (known as “Davidito” in his boyhood).
Very well written story in Newsday about the funeral for the slain family of Coptic Christians in New Jersey. Writers Daryl Khan and Solana Pyne do a good job of making the readers feel the grief and the rage of the mourners.
A long, long time ago — a quarter century, to be precise — I was a copy editor and rock columnist at a daily newspaper in Central Illinois. Careerwise, what I wanted to do was write about religion, which was one reason I had studied the history of religion in America as well as journalism at Baylor University and then did a master’s degree in church-state studies, which combined theology, political science, history and some law.
Kathy Shaidle yesterday passed along a deeply disturbing story from the New York Post. Four Coptic Christians were slashed to death in their New Jersey home. One initial motive, fingered by the Post, was Islamic rage.
Since the purpose of this blog is to look at mainstream coverage of religion news, you would think we would spend quite a bit of time dissecting the coverage of mainstream print’s only wire service dedicated to covering religion. Makes sense, right? That would be the Religion News Service, or RNS, now operated by Newhouse.
When I first received a forward of this story, I thought for a second that it might be an urban legend. But no, it does seem to have been posted by the Associated Press. I have not seen it in any Florida media, however, and that surprises me. Rather than critique this simple story, let’s just read the heart of it.
Last February GetReligion mentioned the story of Matthew Bass, who was expelled from Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary who was expelled after administrators heard that he was gay and asked him about it.
